The Liquor Talking

It’s great being back to work. It spews being out of town for a week at time, but I’ve been further away and for longer.

There was time that I wanted to be a mountain man.

I can’t remember the name of the book, but I read it in 5th grade. It was a book about the adventures of a pair of trappers in the mid-1800s. I liked the idea of being independent, free from the constraints of civilized society, but mostly free from having to go to school.

I liked the idea of trapping things, both to eat and to wear as clothing. The trouble was that we lived in town and while our neighborhood had its fair share of stray dogs and cats, mom was pretty clear on her being opposed to my having the necessary traps.

My paternal grandparents however lived on the end of a very small town in Oklahoma. Grandpa wanted to buy us a bunch of leg-hold traps, but grandma was also worried about our trapping someone’s coonhound. She compromised and let grandpa buy us a couple of live, box traps.

Despite being the world’s foremost expert in trapping, grandpa refused to offer any advice to us. He told us that there were some things that it’s best for boys to learn on their own.

One of the first things we learned is that leftover ham makes excellent bait, particularly if you’re trying to trap skunks. We also learned that for the promise of a hot meal, a hobo could be persuaded to open our traps and release angry skunks. We learned that even though providing food to the indigent is a Christian’s duty, needy people who reeked of skunk had to stay at the end of the driveway to receive their bounty.

We also learned that inviting skunk-sprayed hobos to her house was a violation of protocol. A violation that resulted in a dozen lashes across our backsides with switches from her willow tree.

It was widely held among my cousins and I that grandma planted that willow tree, long before any of us were born, so that she would have an ample supply of switches with which to thrash us.

Not wanting to catch any more skunks or be beaten for being generous to tramps, we decided to try to trap other game. My cousin Anthony was two years older than me and as such, pretty much called the shots whenever he was around. It was he that decided that we should try to trap a buffalo. He had it on good authority that there was a herd of buffalo that frequented the woods behind Old Man Hawkins’ place.

Old Man Hawkins was a crazy old hermit who lived in a old box in the woods past the end of town. His property was between the road and a stretch of property owned by the railroad. The land manager for this particular piece went to the same church as our grandparents and had given us permission to swim and fish in the ponds there. The trouble was that the easiest trail to the ponds cut across Old Man Hawkin’s place and within sight of his door.

Since grandpa was an expert in all such things, we asked him how he’d go about trapping a buffalo. As luck would have it, he used to trap buffalo all the time, some to feed his family and some to sell to zoos. In fact, the reason why buffalo were so scarce in eastern Oklahoma was from his trapping prowess.

According to him, you simply dug a big pit, covered it with a tarp and then covered the tarp with dirt and leaves. When a hapless buffalo came along, it wouldn’t see the pit and fall in. This way, it was a lot easier to kill the buffalo if you wanted to eat it or lasso it if you want to sell it.

The next morning found us digging away at our buffalo trap in the woods behind Old Man Hawkin’s place. All day long, we dug and dug, hauling away the dirt in burlap bags so as to not make it look like a big hole had been dug nearby. By supper time, we had managed to excavate a pit roughly 8 feet square, about 10 feet deep. Anthony determined that this would be sufficient. Following grandpa’s advice, we stretched a tarp over the hole and camouflaged it with dirt, sticks and leaves. By the time we were done, a buffalo would be hard put to see and avoid our hole in time.

We hardly slept a wink that night, dreaming of how we’d spend our share of the proceeds from selling our buffalo to the circus. We plowed through breakfast and set world records for getting our chores done. Once freed from our toils, we raced toward our trap.

As we drew near to our trap, I got the sense that something wasn’t right. While I’d only seen buffalo in zoos, I was pretty sure that they did not smell like skunks and I was equally certain that they didn’t swear at the top of their lungs.

By creeping up and peering over the edge, my suspicions were confirmed. In one corner of our pit was a large skunk. In the other corner was Old Man Hawkins.

One of the final lessons from our trapping season was that for the promise of hot meal, a hobo could be persuaded to go and throw a rope into a hole containing an angry lunatic and a skunk.